http://www.ComputerBob.com/guides/why_i_wont_use_kmail_or_kontact.php .
.
.
by ComputerBob
September 23, 2007
Last Updated January 6, 2008
KDE 4 is scheduled to be released soon, and it looks like it has a lot of cool new features. Unfortunately, everything I've seen about it says that it's still going to be missing an important feature that many computer users (especially Windows converts to Linux) have come to expect — apparently because a few developers don't like or use that feature. And to make matters worse, every time I've ever seen anyone complain about it, many of the responses have tried to convince them that "no one needs" that feature. In other words, "I don't use that feature, so you shouldn't have a choice to use it." I think the whole situation is an embarrassment to the entire Linux community, because it reinforces the (mostly untrue) stereotype that Linux users are antisocial, elitist geeks.
Like most people, I like to use software that I'm familiar with, instead of constantly switching to new applications. For example, I've been using Mozilla's Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email software for a few years, and I really like them. But when my needs change, sometimes I have to start using something new and different instead of tried and true. Lately, my work and personal schedules have gotten busy enough that I'm thinking of adding personal information management (PIM) software to the list of things that I use every day. Happily, Linux gives me a few PIM choices, including Kontact, the free, open-source PIM suite that comes with many KDE-based Linux distros, including the one that I use full-time, Mepis Linux. Since Kontact has several nicely integrated components, including email, if I decide to use Kontact, I'll switch from using Thunderbird to Kontact's KMail application. As an experiment, last night I successfully imported my Thunderbird email messages into KMail, imported my Thunderbird address book into Kontact's KAddressbook, and entered several upcoming scheduled events and a few to-do-list tasks into its KOrganizer. I really like Kontact's configurable Summary screen, which shows me selected information from Kontact's various applications, So far, so good. I'll let you know how it turns out.
UPDATE: I've spent the past 4 hours going around and around with the same symptoms in KMail. Using Mepis 6.5.02, KMail has no problems RECEIVING mail from several POP accounts, but it just sits there when I try to get it to SEND an email message using any of my SMTP mail servers. I've tried using every combination of security settings (and allowing it to poll the servers to see what they would allow) to no avail. I've also tried enabling and disabling server authentication and using both my username and my username@domainname to get authenticated. I've also tried letting it save my password in Kwallet and NOT letting it save my password at all. As far as I can tell, I've tried every single combination of things over and over and over with no success.
Twice in the past 4 hours, KMail has sent 1 message to 1 of my SMTP servers, while ignoring all of the other messages that were sitting in its Outbox. Even more frustrating was that when I IMMEDIATELY tried to send another new message from the exact same identity through the exact same SMTP server to the exact same recipient, it just sat there and ignored me, without giving me any error messages or clues as to what is wrong. In the meantime, the test messages just keep collecting in my Outbox with no way to send them.
Just to make it clear, I've been using Thunderbird for the past few years to send and receive thousands of email messages to and from those exact same servers, using those exact same accounts and identities, all with no problems at all. In fact, while I was trying to get KMail to work, I sent myself several test messages from Thunderbird. Both Thunderbird and KMail received those test messages, but KMail couldn't reply to them. I wish I could think of a way to blame myself for all the problems I had, but at this point, it sure looks to me like their cause is one or more KMail bugs.
I also did all of the above with and without my firewall disabled, just to make sure that it didn't affect anything.
As I told you yesterday, I'm in the process of trying out different PIMs and had pretty much decided to use Kontact, with its integrated KMail application, because it has the features that I want, and it's very easy and intuitive to use. Unfortunately, last night, I spent several hours unsuccessfully trying to get KMail to work correctly. Once I configured it, it received incoming email messages without any problems, but I spent several hours trying to get it to send email messages. In all that time, it sent only one message, two different times. All the rest of the time, it virtually ignored me (pun intended) every time I tried to send an outgoing email message. I was relieved to discover that I'm not the only one who has had that particular problem with KMail. I hope that someone comes up with a work-around soon, or that maybe the upcoming new release of Mepis Linux will have solved the problem permanently.
UPDATE: Last night, a Google search turned up a few threads in which people had similar problems with KMail, and like at least one forum user suggested, the solution appeared to have something to do with KMail defaulting to using Sendmail. But I don't see anywhere in KMail that lets anyone choose between Sendmail and some other transport method, unless it's this one:
Settings --> Configure KMail --> Accounts --> Sending --> Message Property
That setting lets me choose between "MIME Compliant (Quoted Printable)" and "Allow 8-Bit." It's set to "MIME Compliant" by default and doesn't appear to make any difference when I change it to "Allow 8-Bit."
I'd sure like to get KMail (as part of Kontact) to send mail correctly, since I really like Kontact's PIM features, especially compared to the "Lightning" Thunderbird extension, which had too few features and was kind of clunky to use.
UPDATE 2: After spending a couple more hours dinking around, trying to figure out what's wrong, I still couldn't get SMTP to work. But I did discover that if I go to
Settings --> Configure KMail --> Accounts --> Sending
and click on the Add... button, a pop-up appears, letting me choose between SMTP and Sendmail as my transport. SMTP is selected there by default, and that's what I chose when I set up all of my outgoing SMTP accounts in KMail. I wonder if that value (SMTP) is somehow not getting plugged in to a config file somewhere, and that's what's causing problems.
Here's something new: In KMail, I just enabled SMTP "Server requires authentication" but UN-checked the box to "Save SMTP password."
Then I tried to send the messages in my KMail Outbox. KMail didn't even ask me for my password. and didn't make any attempt to use my DSL connection (the DSL modem lights didn't even flicker). That proves that KMail is not even trying to connect to my SMTP server.
I know what you're thinking: "It sounds like your KMail is hosed."
Yeah, I know, but why is it hosed? I haven't done anything except try to get KMail SMTP to work, using the exact same configuration details that I've been using for years and that still works perfectly in Thunderbird.
KMail, I did everything to make you happy. Why oh why do you treat me so bad?
I think I have an idea for a country western song....
My long saga with KMail is finally over. Last night, I finally got KMail (part of the KDE Kontact PIM suite) to reliably send email messages using SMTP. As you may know, during the past few days, I spent hours and hours on the problem. All of Kontact's other PIM features worked great, and KMail could receive email messages, but it refused to send them — until last night, when I finally deleted all of my outgoing SMTP server configurations. Then I added my main SMTP server back into KMail. After testing to make sure that it worked — and it did — I added my other SMTP servers, one at a time, and tested each one before continuing, until they were all set up again. Apparently, the first time I set up my SMTP servers, something in KMail's SMTP configuration file must have become corrupted at some point, which had prevented KMail from sending out email messages. I'm guessing that when I deleted all of my SMTP servers and re-added them, that rewrote KMail's configution file correctly, and KMail's SMTP service started working. And believe me, I made sure that all of my SMTP servers worked. I must have sent 50 test messages to confirm that every server worked. By the way, for the benefit of anyone who thinks that I must have just entered something incorrectly the first time I set up my SMTP servers in KMail, when I re-added my SMTP servers to KMail, I entered exactly the same SMTP configuration information that I had entered the first time I had added them. In fact, it's also the exact same SMTP configuration information that I've been using in Thunderbird email for the past few years, and in Outlook 2000, Outlook 1997 and Outlook Express for several years before that. The only difference that I can think of is that the first time I added my SMTP servers to KMail, I added them all at the same time, and then tested them afterward, but this time, I added them one at a time and tested each one before adding the next one.
Once I solved my KMail SMTP problem, I began using KMail itself. That's when I discovered something that is an absolute deal-breaker for me. In other words, I discovered something that made me decide that I'm not going to use KMail at all.
Here's why: KMail can display the HTML email messages that I receive. KMail can let me create new HTML messages to send to other people. But KMail will not let me reply to HTML messages without stripping the HTML out of them. In other words, if you send me an HTML email message, I can read it just fine, but when I reply to it, my reply won't contain any of the HTML that you sent to me. Everything that you highlighted or bold-faced or underlined or italicized or changed to a different color or enlarged will be converted back into plain text, along with any tables and bulleted lists that you sent me. In fact, not only does KMail insist on turning everything back into plain text, it also insists on adding colors to the different levels of replies. I can edit what those colors are, but I can't turn them off. If I want to reply to your HTML message, and I want it to look just like it did when you sent it to me, I will have to manually edit it to remove all of the colors that KMail added to it. Then I'll have to manually add your bold-facing, underlining, colors, tables, bulleted lists, etc. Then, I'll have to add my own HTML colors and boldface to differentiate my inline comments from your original message. After I send it to you, if you add new colored or bold-faced inline comments to it and send it back to me again, I'll have to go through it and manually edit it all over again before I can add any new comments to it and send it back to you again. To me, that's a huge, inexcusable problem that would make it absolutely impossible for me to use email the way that I've always used email. It would be like telling me that from now on, I can't use anything but plain text on my web sites. Linux is supposed to be about freedom and choices, but this looks to me like a case of someone else thinking that they have the right to tell me how my email messages should look. Every other email software application that I've used in at least the past decade gave me the choice to use HTML email the way that I want. Since it appears that KMail intentionally takes away that choice, then I choose not to use KMail. I wish I had known all of that before I spent hours and hours trying to get KMail to send email messages, but until I got SMTP working, I had no reason to use KMail to reply to any email messages, let alone use it to reply to an HTML email message and discover that it has a severe limitation in that area.
At first, I couldn't imagine that KMail's developers would have intentionally crippled its HTML capabilities. I assumed that there must be some KMail configuration setting(s) that I had overlooked that would solve the problem, especially since none of the glowing reviews of KMail (and the entire Kontact PIM suite) that I had read several days ago had mentioned anything about it. But when I couldn't find any KMail settings that would solve the problem, I went out on the Web to see if anyone else had experienced it. A few hours of Google searches turned up countless examples of people complaining for the past several years about KMail's inability to properly reply to HTML messages. The problem was first reported to KDE's bug tracking system way back in 2004, but the more I looked into it, the more it appeared that maybe KMail's developers either intentionally crippled its HTML capabilities, or knew about its HTML bug but chose not to fix it. Every time I found a complaint about KMail's HTML flaw, I also found replies that totally ignored the complainant's perfectly valid reasons for wanting to use HTML in their email messages, and told them that they should never use HTML in email messages for reasons like, "HTML is evil" or "HTML is bloated" or "I hate HTML email messages." Sadly, I found that exact same attitude in the KDE forums themselves. Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Scroll down and start reading at the the eighth message in the thread, written by "JMS." I'm sorry to say that, in all of my searching, I didn't find any evidence that anyone intends to ever give KMail the same basic HTML capabilities that most computer users have come to expect all email software to have — not even in the upcoming new version of KDE, KDE 4. If that is the case, then KMail will continue to be a throwback to the days of user-hostile computing, and it will continue to frustrate and disappoint future Linux users the same way it frustrated and disappointed me. I've only been using Linux full-time for a little more than a year, so I'm no expert, and I certainly don't pretend to speak for "the Linux community," but speaking for myself, I'm very sorry to say that I think that this KMail problem makes Linux look bad because it takes away a very important email feature that most people want, which to me reinforces the old stereotype that Linux is just for geeks and antisocial techies.
As a result of my discovery, I'm not even going to use Kontact, the PIM package that contains KMail, even though I really liked all of Kontact's other features. The whole point of using a PIM is to have all of your email, contacts, schedule, to-do list, notes, etc., integrated into one application, so it would be kind of pointless for me to use Kontact if I'd still have to use a separate email program (Thunderbird) with its own separate address book. That's too bad, because that huge KMail HTML problem is really the only thing that's keeping me from using both KMail and Kontact as my only PIM and email client. Even though I've always been very happy with Thunderbird, it doesn't include any PIM features — that's the whole reason why I went looking for a PIM solution a few days ago. I know that there's another Linux PIM suite called Evolution, but I've read lots of user comments that say that it's very slow and very bloated, so I haven't even bothered to try it. That's why, for now, and unless and until I can find a better solution, I'm going to keep using Thunderbird, but I'm going to add the Lightning extension that integrates a rudimentary calendar/appointment scheduler into Thunderbird. Although the combination of Thunderbird and Lightning is not as polished, full-featured or intuitive as Kontact, Thunderbird has always done everything I've asked it to do, and Lightning is fast and easy to access. Just as importantly, Thunderbird doesn't try to dictate to me how I should use my email.
UPDATE, January 7, 2008: If you feel like I do (with apologies to Peter Frampton), please register at KDE and vote for the KMail HTML bug: http://bugs.kde.org/votes.cgi?action=show_user&bug_id=86423 — and you can read all the bug-report comments about it at
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86423.